What is Mindful Psychotherapy?
Mindful Psychotherapy is an abbreviation for the full term
Mindfulness-Based Core Process Psychotherapy
While the name might sound technical, Mindfulness-Based Core Process Psychotherapy simply means bringing gentle, aware attention to what’s happening inside us—thoughts, emotions, sensations—and working together in a grounded, compassionate relationship to support healing and change.
It’s a deeply respectful and relational approach developed at the Karuna Institute in Devon.
Rooted in Buddhist principles and informed by contemporary psychotherapeutic thinking, this model offers a mindful, compassionate, and trauma-informed way of working with human suffering.
This approach recognises that our experiences live not just in our thoughts, but also in our bodies. Healing can emerge not only through talking, but also through gently reconnecting with sensations, intuition, and the felt sense of our inner life.
At its heart, this therapy is about presence. It brings together ancient Eastern understandings of the mind with Western psychological insight to create a space that’s grounded, embodied, and deeply relational.
The Healing Relationship
True transformation happens in relationship. Many of our early wounds are relational—formed within families, communities, or systems that couldn’t fully meet our needs. In Core Process Psychotherapy, healing begins through a new kind of relationship: one grounded in presence, authenticity, and care.
This process isn’t about quick fixes or surface-level change. It’s about creating a safe, steady space where something deeper can unfold—touching the roots of old pain, outdated patterns, and forgotten parts of ourselves.
Why I Love This Work
For me, this work is both a calling and a privilege. It is profoundly moving to sit with another person in honesty and presence, especially when we begin to touch what once felt too painful or too private to share.
Something shifts when we can meet our experience—grief, shame, anger, fear—with the support of another. That shift isn’t always dramatic or obvious, but it’s real. It’s alive. I believe in the quiet, lasting changes that come from this kind of deep listening and shared inquiry.
Therapy, at its best, is a sacred space of care and truth-telling. It’s a place where transformation becomes possible—often quietly, gradually, but deeply.